In the Senate, Hatfield stood alone -- increasingly

A week in 1995 displayed what an unusual -- and from the perspective of 2011, unimaginable -- figure Mark Hatfield was in the U.S. Senate.

Republicans had just won control of Congress and were pushing through their highest-profile pledge, a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. Democrats with a strong sensitivity to winds were falling in line, the Senate count was one short of the two-thirds needed, and every Senate Republican supported the amendment.

Except one.

If Congress wanted a balanced budget, Mark Hatfield explained to a reporter in his Senate office, as the phones outside rang nonstop on the issue, all it had to do was pass one. And there was something ludicrous, he pointed out, in a constitutional amendment that required only a three-fifths vote of Congress to suspend it: "We've gotten that five times in one day in passing a budget act."

Besides a high-profile vote, it was a high-pressure moment. In a newly Republican Senate, Hatfield was once again chairman of the Appropriations Committee -- a job that a lot of Senate Republicans thought shouldn't belong to someone opposing the party on the balanced budget amendment issue. Majority Whip Trent Lott of Mississippi complained Hatfield showed "an awful lot of arrogance," Connie Mack of Florida thought Hatfield shouldn't be chairman, and Bob Smith of New Hampshire and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania urged Oregon voters to remove Hatfield from the Senate.

Hatfield was not moved -- and not moved from the chair. In a party caucus called to press him into line, former Sen. Alan Simpson told Politico.com, "He blistered the hypocrites and told them they would all be coming back with hands out-stretched to him on appropriations after voting for the amendment."

As one Republican Senate staff member commented about Hatfield and another GOP moderate, John Chafee of Rhode Island: Hatfield had been at Iwo Jima, and Chafee at Guadalcanal; they weren't going to be intimidated by Rick Santorum.

Besides, Mark Hatfield had been outside the GOP tent before. When he retired, he was the only member of a mostly Democratic Oregon congressional delegation who would call himself a liberal -- and almost a pacifist.

A good deal of that had to do with Iwo Jima -- and with being one of the first Americans into post-blast Hiroshima. For Hatfield's entire career, his opposition to U.S. military adventures put him on the fringe of not just Republicans, but the entire Senate. During the Reagan years, he complained about Democrats going along with Reagan's policies. As Appropriations chairman, Hatfield oversaw massively expanded military budgets -- but never voted for any of them.

His peace policy included opposition to abortion, a stance that in Oregon might have endangered anybody but Hatfield. It helped that Hatfield didn't sound like any other Senate abortion opponent.

"I have more arguments with the people I vote with on this issue," he pointed out as he faced his last re-election campaign in 1990. "I say, 'Won't you please help us with population-control or family-planning issues?' and their feeling about the sanctity of life disappears. Or, I say, 'How about prenatal care or women and children's nutrition programs?' Often I say to them, 'I wish you'd be as concerned about sanctity of life after birth as you are about it in the womb.'"

Hatfield's commitment to life led him to introduce a bill requiring executions to be televised, explaining, "If we do want to execute people, we should not do it in hiding. We should take full credit for this barbarism."

Still, he found himself steadily lonelier. Asked about being a moderate Republican in 1993, he said wanly, "I've just filed papers with the EPA to have us declared an endangered species." Hatfield's retirement was greeted with reverence, but if he had run for a sixth term, he would have faced a sharp and possibly successful conservative primary challenge.

But Hatfield had shown in his 1990 race that when he had to, he could get down from the pedestal -- as far down as necessary.

Today, we have fewer politicians who've gone through their own Iwo Jima -- who know not only what they believe but why they believe it, and not because of a poll or a caucus.

Instead, we have a lot of Rick Santorums. David Sarasohn, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8523 or dsarasohn@oregonian.com. See other writing at oregonlive.com/sarasohn